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Environmental contamination and sickness are the result of years of mining in La Unión

[Translation of an article from ContraPunto of El Salvador for April 13, 2013. See original here.]

By Gerardo Arbaiza

San Salvador – In the extreme east of the country, in the canton of San Sebastián in the Santa Rosa de Lima municipality of La Unión, is a good example of extreme neglect by government authorities, despite its being beside the most profitable gold mine in the country, a mine worked from 1968 to the beginning of the ‘80s by the United States company Commerce Group, from which a total of seven billion dollars is said to have been extracted, from which no benefit for the community is to be seen.

The list of tribulations in San Sebastián is long: the sulphurous color of the water in the San Sebastián River extends a depressing welcome to a community that, its inhabitants say, is visited by officials only when legislative and mayoral candidates are looking for votes. The acidity of this water (pH between four and five) makes it impossible to drink, comments Cidia Cortez, a researcher with the Centro de Investigación sobre Inversión y Comercio (CEICOM – Center for Research into Investment and Commerce). (more…)

[Translation of an article from ContraPunto of San Salvador for March 25, 2013. See original here. Long-time activist Roberto Cañas was a signatory to the peace accords of 1992 that marked the end of the 12-year civil war in El Salvador.]

By David Ernesto Pérez

San Salvador – Once the civil war was over, the Truth Commission was installed in El Salvador for the purpose of investigating hundreds of massacres, summary executions and disappearances. On March 15, 1993, the group submitted to the United Nations a report concluding that 85 percent of the crimes committed in the conflict were the responsibility of the armed forces.

On the same day that the members of the Truth Commission – Belisario Betancur, Thomas Buergenthal and Reinaldo Figueredo Planchart – submitted the results of their investigation, which had taken more than six months, then President Alfredo Cristiani Burkard of the ARENA party [Alianza Republicana Nacionalista] was promoting the implementation of an “immediate amnesty.” (more…)

((ContraPunto photo))

There are currently 81,000 maquiladora workers in the country

[Translation of an article from ContraPunto of San Salvador for July 30. See original here.]

by Gloria Morán

San Salvador – She is a 43-year-old woman and she has worked in a maquiladora making clothing in San Marcos, San Salvador, for eight years. During that time her routine has been to get up at 4:00 in the morning. She is Marta (a fictitious name), she lives in Apopa and it takes her an hour to get to the factory.

Marta is the single mother of three girls, 19, 13 and ten years of age, which makes her situation more difficult. For the past eight years she has had to get up early to make breakfast and lunch for herself and her daughters. Her salary is 187.40 dollars a month, minus the deductions required by law. (more…)

((Morena Herrera – ContraPunto photo))

Morena Herrera charges FMLN has more interest in government positions than in social change

[Abridged translation of an article from ContraPunto of San Salvador for May 28. See original here and related articles here and here.]

by Gerardo Arbaiza

San Salvador – Morena Herrera, founder of the emblematic feminist organization Las Dignas and of the Colectiva Feminista para el Desarrollo Local, speaks with authority on the outlook for the social Left in El Salvador 20 years after the end of the armed conflict this small nation lived through from 1980 to 1992.

Herrera, who was also a guerrilla fighter, considers the feminist movement to have had a very hard struggle adapting at certain specific junctures due to the diverse opinions and the constant debate within the movement.

Herrera states that despite this diversity of opinions, an effort has been made to join together in a position of independence in the face of resolute adherence to the party. (more…)

((Muricio Funes, Salvador Sánchez Cerén))

[Translation of an article from El Faro of San Salvador for April 16. See original here.]

by Jimena Aguilar

Shortly before the third anniversary of the first Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional government, Vice President Salvador Sánchez Cerén on Monday made statements concerning the administration to which he was elected in 2009, admitting that the administration has failed to comply with what it offered the voters and holding President Mauricio Funes responsible for this. “The country still believes that change is not possible because it has not seen any,” he told journalists in an impromptu press conference in the Legislative Assembly.

Sánchez Cerén, one of the three top leaders of the leftist party, appeared as an opponent in his first public statements dissenting from Funes, declaring that the failure of the government to comply is because the president has not concerned himself with supporting what suits the party that put him in power. (more…)

[Translation of a column from ContraPunto of San Salvador for March 8. See original here.]

By Armando Salazar

San Salvador – While capital looks upon the elections as the continuation of its hegemony and its business deals, resulting in the renewal of functionaries who would “improve and perfect” institutions, reality and history have demonstrated that, so far, elections have reproduced an establishment that generates opulence and impunity as well as extensive poverty, exclusion and institutional offense.

The left, inserted into electoral political life since 1992, has little by little taken more institutional positions in mayoralties (96), legislatures (41%) and a contentious presidential election won in alliance with other sectors, which has allowed it to control some government functions. (more…)

Funes removed FMLN from power in public security system

[Translation of an article from ContraPunto of San Salvador for January 24. See original here and related articles here and here.]

San Salvador – El Salvador’ governing party, the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN), formerly a guerrilla force, declared on Tuesday that President Mauricio Funes’ naming of a military officer to head the police force is a violation of the constitution of the republic.

Funes, a member of the FMLN, on Monday named retired General Francisco Salinas, who had been vice-minister of national defense until that same Monday, to head the Policía Nacional Civil (PNC – National Civil Police), which, according to the party, is a violation of the constitution. (more…)

Repressive strategies led by former soldiers are the new norm in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador

[Translation of an article from ContraPunto of San Salvador for December 14. See original here and related articles here, here and here.]

By Gerardo Arbaiza

The Central American Northern Triangle, consisting of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, has been found in several studies to be the most violent region of the world not involved in an armed conflict.

According to a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Honduras is in first place in the world in homicides, with a rate of 78 for every 100,000 inhabitants, followed by El Salvador with 66 and, three levels below, Guatemala, with a total of 41 murders per 100,000 inhabitants.

The World Health Organization considers a country to be in an epidemic when the rate of deaths from any cause reaches ten for every 100,000 inhabitants.

The strategy these countries have adopted recently to reduce these figures is directed at taking members of the armed forces and using them together with police forces for tasks of citizen security. (more…)

[Translation of an article from El Faro of San Salvador for December 7. See original here.]

by Sergio Arauz

After a steady reduction in the armed forces from the signing of the Peace Accord until they were stabilized at around 11,000 men, the administration of President Mauricio Funes has increased the number of men under arms by almost 57 percent, according to data from the National Ministry of Defense.

This growth in the number of soldiers is added to the fact that never before since the signing of the Peace Accords has the military played such an active role in the life of the country as during this first administration of Funes and the FMLN [Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional] that brought him to power. During the present administration, the military has been charged with carrying out public security tasks they had lost in 1992 or that they had never had, like guarding the perimeters of prisons. (more…)

[Translation of an article from ContraPunto of San Salvador for September 12. See original here.]

By Gloria Morán

San Salvador – Twelve women’s organizations united as the Articulación por el Derecho a Decidir (Coalition for the Right to Choose) on Monday declared their support for therapeutic abortion and called on the Salvadoran government to decriminalize it.

Their statement comes within the framework of the day for the decriminalization of abortion in Latin America and the Caribbean, to be observed next September 28.

Until 1997, the law in El Salvador permitted abortion in three circumstances: therapeutic abortion, when the life of the woman was in danger; eugenic abortion, when the fetus was not viable due to malformations; and ethical abortion, when the baby was the product of rape or incest. (more…)

Two rightist candidates will contend for the Guatemalan presidency in November runoff election

[Translation of an article from Diario Tiempo of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, for September 12, based on an Agence France Presse dispatch. See original here.]

The president of the Salvadoran legislature, leftist Sigfrido Reyes, on Monday denied that the rightist win in Sunday’s elections in Guatemala signals a general turn to the right in Central America.

“Guatemala has taken a step within its democratic development,” said Reyes, who led a mission from the Salvadoran legislature to observe the elections in Guatemala. Two rightists, retired General Otto Pérez and businessman Manuel Baldizón, will compete for the presidency of Guatemala in a runoff in November, as indicated by a count of 95 percent of the polls in the Sunday election.

Reyes, leader of the ruling Frente Farabundo Martí (FMLN) of El Salvador, denied that the results signal “the return to power of the right” in Central America and declared that the case of Guatemala is “atypical.” In Guatemala, “the party institutions are young, some of them weak, in other cases they tend to be short-lived. This last element is very characteristic of the Guatemalan political tradition, so each election is a surprise,” he stressed. The legislator denied a general return to power of the right on the isthmus, affirming that in the other Central American countries “there are established parties (on the left), with histories and with very well defined ideologies.”

Three leftists won presidencies in Central America between 2007 and 2009, an unprecedented occurrence: Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua (Sandinista), Álvaro Colom in Guatemala (Social Democrat) and Mauricio Funes in El Salvador (FMLN). Honduras and Panama have rightist governments, while that of Costa Rica is nominally social democrat but is considered on the right because of its neoliberal policies.

[Translation of an interview from La Jornada of Mexico City for June 22. See original here.]

by Blanche Petrich

Two years as president and he has three to go. The first ruler of his country, El Salvador, not to come from the oligarchy. He defends his pragmatism as an indispensable attribute at this juncture. Mauricio Funes Cartagena, 53 years old, recognizes beforehand that in 2014, when he leaves the presidential residence, he will be “halfway done,” leaving unfulfilled many of the aspirations that led partisans of the leftist Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) and the popular sectors to vote for him in 2009.

“I am aware that people are going to be disappointed. I never thought in a utopian way; I knew I would diverge from the historical aspirations of the people. I understand that the unions are frustrated, I understand the frustration of the teachers, with whom I reached an agreement for an improvement in their salaries and now we are not going to achieve that in the terms we agreed on. It is just that I do not have any more resources to improve the hospitals, to improve the living standards for many. But despite it all, El Salvador has changed. (more…)